He used an elaborate fly whisk to wave away insects that weren't actually there.

His answers, through a translator, seemed rambling.

Author Kenneth Timmerman, who has also met him, says Gadhafi has kept power through cunning.

"He's a very, very skilled player," Timmerman said. "He divides the country. He conquers the small groups. He's kept the tribes squabbling amongst themselves, and up until relatively recently he has distributed some of the oil wealth to the people."

Human rights groups also say that Gadhafi's regime has killed, jailed and tortured its opponents.

Libya today is in turmoil. Back then, it was in transition, a rogue state trying to redeem itself.

Pressed by international sanctions, it had abandoned support for terrorist organizations, surrendered its weapons of mass destruction to the West and was trying to open-up its economy.

Gadhafi told me he was angry that Libya never got the payoff it expected: U.S. esteem and investment.

In part it was because Washington's attention had turned to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But it was also, no doubt, because no American president or politician would be eager to embrace the man Ronald Reagan once called a "mad dog."

In any country or company's plans for Libya, Moammar Gadhafi was the wildcard, the unpredictable element. He still is.